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Theory: Alan Dye designed the terrible Liquid Glass because he already knew he was going to a competitor.

S

Sami13496

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Seriously, I’ve been trying to figure out how on earth all the OS 26 (iOS, iPadOS, macOS) and Liquid Glass ended up being this awful.

Nobody could accidentally create something this horrendous. And to make matters worse, it’s not just an eyesore. It also feels sticky, sluggish, and completely riddled with bugs.
It just can’t be an accident.

My theory is that he did it on purpose because he already knew he was leaving Apple.
 
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According to Gurman, Liquid Glass was in development for 3 years. You give Dye too much credit if you think he could handle that kind of long con.

More realistically, he knew Liquid Glass was going to take another year or two, but pushed it out early so he could leave without his project being unfinished.
 
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Nada Ting said:
I hardly think he could have designed, coded and released it by himself without anyone else testing it. This is clearly a corporate-wide conspiracy of sabotage to bring down the entire corporation.
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Do people not realize that its teams of people that design, develop and implement features? I bet the new design lead was part of the design leadership team that developed the new interface.
 
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As someone that prefers simplicity I find the liquid glass aesthetic overly busy and dated feeling. Feels like change for the sake of change. After setting it from 'clear' to 'tinted' I'm fine with it but still don't love it.

That said I doubt its implementation was malicious. It's just a new design that I don't like as much, simple as that. I'm getting older and modern fashion blows my mind anymore so I try not to judge too harshly. I mean I'm still upset that cargo shorts are bad fashion....

Regardless there are better hills to die on....
 
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Not sure why LG is getting so much flack to be honest. Does it have bugs; yes, every OS does and it’s nothing new. Will it be refined; yes, every UX has over many many years. Are people frustrated because it’s a bit of a learning curve; yes, this is also normal human behaviour. Will people eventually get over it; probably, some will still hold out and waste energy being angry. Is the competition any better; debatable, you are free to do whatever you please but it will cost you time and money either way.
 
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1. I like Liquid Glass and where it is going - especially on iOS, it's really quite good, and will obviously get better with time (just like iOS 7). It is not terrible, that's for sure.

2. There is no effing way Liquid Glass wasn't started at least in June 2024 at the latest, when Sequoia / iOS 18 etc. was announced at WWDC - they must have been working on Liquid Glass by then. If Alan Dye knew he was leaving Apple for Facebook that early, I'll eat my hat.
 
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Sami13496 said:
Seriously, I’ve been trying to figure out how on earth all the OS 26 (iOS, iPadOS, macOS) and Liquid Glass ended up being this awful.

Nobody could accidentally create something this horrendous. And to make matters worse, it’s not just an eyesore. It also feels sticky, sluggish, and completely riddled with bugs.
It just can’t be an accident.

My theory is that he did it on purpose because he already knew he was leaving Apple.
Click to expand...
Most people don’t care, and I’m basically one of them. I’m more into getting rid of bugs. So, I don’t believe in your theory.
 
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Sami13496 said:
And to make matters worse, it’s not just an eyesore. It also feels sticky, sluggish, and completely riddled with bugs.
Click to expand...
I’d be surprised if he wrote “take care to make it sluggish and buggy” into the spec that Apple’s code monkeys then faithfully implemented.

Sami13496 said:
My theory is that he did it on purpose because he already knew he was leaving Apple.
Click to expand...
My theory is that, apart from the misguided visual and interaction design, Apple doesn’t have a good grasp on their graphics/UI stack anymore.
 
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That or Apple is super corporate and process driven and has issues internally delivering a new complete product due to no clear direct vision.

Examples: See Apple Car, Apple Vision Pro, heck early Apple Watch took some time to develop.
 
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I agree. It’s hot garbage. My iPad mini is almost unusable with how bad the OS is.

Been honestly thinking about putting a Linux distribution on my MacBook Pro at this point. I’d miss the message integration but it only works 30% of the time anyway.
 
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SAIRUS said:
That or Apple is super corporate and process driven and has issues internally delivering a new complete product due to no clear direct vision.

Examples: See Apple Car, Apple Vision Pro, heck early Apple Watch took some time to develop.
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Nonsense. All companies have r&d products that never made it to light. Apple Vision Pro is a technological tour-de-force and a success. A product doesn’t have to sell billions of units in order to be successful.

Make no mistake Apple is a corporation, I don’t understand the meaning of super corporate. I do not think they are mired down in management layers and management bickering that is never resolvable.
 
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Sami13496 said:
Seriously, I’ve been trying to figure out how on earth all the OS 26 (iOS, iPadOS, macOS) and Liquid Glass ended up being this awful.

Nobody could accidentally create something this horrendous. And to make matters worse, it’s not just an eyesore. It also feels sticky, sluggish, and completely riddled with bugs.
It just can’t be an accident.

My theory is that he did it on purpose because he already knew he was leaving Apple.
Click to expand...
Apart from the obvious bugs, the design feels wholly unfinished. I would say at this point, it’s not even beta quality.
 
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racer1441 said:
I agree. It’s hot garbage. My iPad mini is almost unusable with how bad the OS is.

Been honestly thinking about putting a Linux distribution on my MacBook Pro at this point. I’d miss the message integration but it only works 30% of the time anyway.
Click to expand...
Which Linux distro would you try?
 
eh..


on current hardware performance is fine.

i can see it being a new industry trend as we head towards AR in general, we’re going to need a UI that can be more easily overlaid on top of things and liquid (gl)ass is an experimental step in that direction.
 
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throAU said:
eh..


on current hardware performance is fine.

i can see it being a new industry trend as we head towards AR in general, we’re going to need a UI that can be more easily overlaid on top of things and liquid (gl)ass is an experimental step in that direction.
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Sure but iPhone isn’t AR. Why need to force AR-like UI on none-AR interface? Gimmick.
 
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